With data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for selected years from 1988 and projected to

Question:

With data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for selected years from 1988 and projected to 2018, the billions of dollars spent for personal consumption in the United States can be modeled by
P = 2969e0.051t
where t is the number of years past 1985.
(a) Is this model one of exponential growth or exponential decay? Explain.
(b) Graph this equation with a graphing utility to show the graph from 1985 through the year 2020.